Monday, January 23, 2006

The Laurel-Crowned Princess, Chapter 11, ‘The Practice Room'


Chapter 11, The Practice Room

Right after that ‘I’ got off the phone, and ‘I’ stuck my hands up in the air as if I had just won a race, and said over and over, “I can’t believe I did it, I can’t believe I did it, that was too easy, I can’t believe I made such a big deal of that!”

“You did it Brian, you did it! Now I’m going to go back into the kitchen to talk to Memaw to tell her what happened!”

Brian walked past us both as if we weren’t there, and he walked back into the kitchen.

As soon as we walked through the kitchen door, we had just walked into the front doors of the old music building at college, also bordered in sand.

“Whoa, what’s up?”

Pepaw told me to follow him.

I knew this building way better than he did, but we walked past the recital hall where the choir was practicing, past the classroom where my 8:00 theory class was my freshman year and through to the practice rooms. The band was practicing, and I thought we might go in there.

Pepaw instead turned right and led me down the hall where the practice rooms were and he stopped in front of one of the rooms.

Through the long vertical window, there she was playing the fire out of her clarinet. Her green eyes, shadowed by her hair were intently focused, no, glaring at the music she was playing, her blue coat on the piano in the room.

“She looks like Memaw did at her age.”

“I feel just like I would have back in college if I had ever stopped and stared through the window at her. She probably would have freaked! You sure she can’t see us? I can’t look!”

Wait...this was the Tuesday, wasn’t it the Monday or Tuesday after Spring Break?

The band rehearsal was over, and she had all her things together, her coat back on. Almost storming out of the practice room, she hurried out, unaware of us.

Go To Chapter 12